AQUAMAN

By the age of 15 Arthur Arutkin was European youth slalom champion, these days it’s hard to pin him down to one discipline; he’s one of the very few sailors that competes on both the professional SUP and windsurf tours. A world champion in SUP racing, he’s equally at home in a PWA wave heat and regularly posts videos of himself ripping up his home spot of Wissant in Northern France, not to mention recently windsurfing the famed break of Teahupo’o in Tahiti. Read on as Arthur gives us an insight into his life.

- Arthur Arutkin

FAMILY ARUTKIN

My dad and sister Alice, both windsurf. My bigger brother also windsurfed but he stopped to be a doctor in physics. Windsurfing was really a family affair when we were growing up. My best friends all windsurf with me back at home, so it has always been a part of my upbringing. At school I studied science and managed to graduate with that even though I had been travelling a lot during my final year. I finished with good grades, so I was pretty happy.

WINDSURF AND SUP

It can be tricky to combine both sports but none of the respective tour dates clashed this year thankfully, so I was able to go to all the PWA wave and APP events. For the training it can be a bit of a nightmare, but normally it all works out. For SUP I was world champion in 2018 and vice world champion in 2019. I still need to achieve better results in windsurfing, but I am young and feel I am improving. I hope it will come soon. I am doing a bit of SUP surfing, but my focus is mostly in the racing. The racing has sprints and endurance, so it really pushes your limits. SUP is also a mind sport when racing, you can never give up as you don’t know what the other guys have got left in the tank. It is like a marathon. With windsurfing when you wave sail it is mostly for fun. You practice because it is your passion and it is more pleasure than the hardcore training for races.

WISSANT

Wissant is home for me but most of the year I am away training or at competitions. I am not home a lot. I spend a lot of time in South Africa and Maui every year. Wissant is awesome for sailing when it is windy, but when there is no wind the swell gets blocked by England. So, it is a wind swell location, but is still often quite good often. We get a lot of wind in the English Channel, so I can’t complain!

FANATIC